Remote workers can have a 54% lower carbon footprint compared with onsite workers, according to a new study by Cornell and Microsoft, with lifestyle choices and work arrangements playing an essential role in determining the environmental benefits of remote and hybrid work.
The study, published Sept. 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also finds that hybrid workers who work from home two to four days per week can reduce their carbon footprint by 11% to 29%, but working from home one day per week is more negligible, cutting carbon footprint by only 2%. Hybrid workers at home once a week tend to have comparatively less commuting distance, home energy use and non-commute travel.
“Remote work is not zero carbon, and the benefits of hybrid work are not perfectly linear,” said study senior author Fengqi You, the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor in Energy Systems Engineering. “Everybody knows without commuting you save on transportation energy, but there’s always lifestyle effects and many other factors.”
The main contributors to carbon footprint for onsite and hybrid workers, according to the study, are travel and office energy use. That’s no surprise to researchers quantifying the impact of remote work on the environment, but Cornell and Microsoft used survey data and modeling to incorporate factors sometimes overlooked when calculating carbon footprint, including residential energy use based on time-use allocation, non-commute distance and mode of transportation, communications device usage, number of household members and office configuration, such as seat sharing and building size.
Notable findings and observations include:
- Non-commute travel, such as trips to social and recreational activities, becomes more significant as the number of remote workdays increases.
- Seat sharing among hybrid workers under full-building attendance can reduce carbon footprint by 28%.
- Hybrid workers tend to commute farther than onsite workers due to differences in housing choices.
